Elena

This 2012 Seattle International Film Festival drama from Russia is sooooo Russian! Our screening audience likened it to watching grass grow...

This is advertised as a thriller, but it is mostly a grim illustration of what domestic drudges are some diligent Russian women and how adolescent and demanding the heavy-drinking men can be.

The pace is glacial: e.g., looooong single takes that linger on someone turning off an alarm, then slowly waking up, stretching, dragging out of bed, putting on a robe, opening the curtains, looking out the window and then trudging out of the bedroom. ...Yawn...

Our eponymous heroine is a former nurse married to a wealthy man who isn't in very good health. When he mentions he wants to write a will and explains how he plans to divide his estate (between her and his grown daughter), she can't bear the thought of having less money to give to her grown son and his family. That the son is an unemployed layabout is completely unimportant to her and it's clear to us how he got that way!

Need I mention that she knows her way around pharmaceuticals?